Charmaine Regina Asril Lee

BAEP 450
Trade Association
I came across a few of the important trade associations in my industry,
International Business Innovation Association: https://www.inbia.org/
Entrepreneurs Organization: https://www.eonetwork.org/
eWomen: https://new.ewomennetwork.com/
Graphic Artists Guild: https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/
Society of Illustrators: http://www.societyillustrators.org/
Women 2.0: http://women2.com/2009/01/26/entrepreneurship-book-swap/
Girls in Tech: http://girlsintech.org/
American Marketing Association: https://www.ama.org/Pages/default.aspx
I am a double major in Media arts + Practice and Business Administration with a minor in
Communication Design, ultimately I would love to be able to combine my passion in the arts
with a potential entrepreneurial idea. I find the most interesting trade associations are Girls in
Tech and the Graphic Artists Guild specifically. Girls in Tech is a global non-profit that focuses on
the empowerment of innovative women in technology and building startups. The three aspects
they believe in are empowerment, engagement and education the empowerment of women to
innovate and speak up within the industry, engagement of technology to unite women, and
facilitating learning for women within the STEM fields. This relates to me because I have always
been interested in tech start-ups and having been involved in building my own mobile iOS
application, I found engaging with Girls in Tech, not only served as a network of support but also
inspiration and encouragement for each other in a career field mostly dominated by men. The
Graphic Artists Guild, is an interesting association that I found through research. Its purpose is
to help members build successful career by offering the necessary skills and support within the
creative field like, graphic and interactive designers, web programmers or illustrators. As an
artist of multidisciplines myself, I find their mission very relevant they are committed to
improving conditions for artists and raising standards for all graphic artists in a market that does
not seem to place as a high of a professional emphasis on. In order to do so, they hold
workshops, seminars and sends out newsletters to enhance one's creative practice and learning
to grow one's clients list.
I attended the collaborative Girls in Tech event with LA Uncubed on February 16, it was a paid
evening of career- advancing talks with the leaders of LA's most innovative companies like
Google, BuzzFeed, Tradesy and Grindr. It was not my first, but it was definitely another

memorable networking night that introduced successful people talking about their career and
giving advice. What stuck with me was four out of seven speakers were women, and they were
all involved in the tech industry. Allies Wright, for example was the tech lead at Google. The
main three important take aways from the trade-show were, be pro-active and humble with
networking, no one is going to come up to you for if you just stood stood there sipping on your
orange juice, you have to take the initiative to talk to others. Prepare an elevators pitch for a
self- introduction because that will help with getting over the anxiety of networking with
strangers. Lastly, I learnt that a common theme behind every speakers success was their ability
to find passion in their job and together with dedication and a bit of shamelessness, anything is
possible.